SFO15-200K3 : The Web and Digital Rights Management

Session Resources

Speaker: John Simmons Date: September 22, 2015 Title: SFO15-200K3 : The Web and Digital Rights Management – the technical solution to the Web-DRM paradox and its disruptive implications ★ Session Description ★ ABSTRACT: The Internet poses a fascinating technical challenge for commercial media distribution. As noted in a 2003 United Nations WIPO report, the principle purpose of DRM is to create an element of scarcity on behalf of a rights holder; but doing so raises a fundamental paradox - the business of the publisher lies in providing access rather than preventing it. The report went on to state: “Nevertheless, unless copyright is to be abandoned as a mechanism for trading in intellectual property entirely, it will be essential to find an answer to this paradox.” The introduction in 2011 of a global standard for DRM-interoperable encoding and the 2012 Microsoft-Netflix-Google proposal for HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) provided a partial answer to this paradox. What remained was to extend this capability to open source applications, thus providing a complete answer to the Web-DRM paradox while enabling open, interoperable media applications with access to enhanced content protection. This talk will cover the technical underpinnings of this highly disruptive, strategic inflection point, the interplay between open source and enhanced content protection and the implications for both commercial video and the Internet. John’s bio: John Simmons is the visionary who inspired Microsoft to play a leadership role in the creation of international media standards. In a 2008 internal memo John envisioned a RESTful, interoperable commercial media stack, predicting its impact on the Web. His efforts resulted in Microsoft publishing specs for DRM-interoperable encoding and adaptive streaming, which in turn culminated in the ISO MPEG standards for Common Encryption and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). He led the creation of an OAuth 2.0 TV Everywhere authorization standard, initiated the Google-Microsoft-Netflix contributions to W3C for HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and Media Source Extensions (MSE) and authored an open spec to enable embedded browsers to implement EME without the use of proprietary software. At present John is the Media Platform Architect for Microsoft’s Operating System Group.